Rejected by FYROM?

I am writing this blog from, k get this a Japanese guest house. How me and 2 of my team mates ended up here is an exciting tale of many twists and turns. So sit back and relax while you enjoy the story.

It all started on the eve of June 4th when the karazy Eastern European team caught a night train from Istanbul to Sofia. The team was expecting the night to be incidence free and were hoping that there would be plenty of sleep involved during this endeavour.

The first 3 hours of the train were rather sleepful, but then the Turkish border came. Everyone in the train had to wake up and get out of the train to hand their passports to officials. As I stepped out of the train I was bombarded and my breath was taken away from me because the cold night air was exactly that...completely freezing. It was the coldest we had been since Russia, and all of our warm clothes we had either given away or were packed at the bottom of our bags.

We spent about an hour and a half at the Turkish border and for what reason I am not quite sure at all. Then came border number one of Bulgaria, basically incident free. After a few more hours of fitfull sleep (I woke up smelling something horribly rancid and I thought that we were being gassed and that people were gonna rob us...but other than that it was an enjoyable train ride) We get to Sofia which is in Bulgaria after about 16 hours on the train, and we rush to the bus station just in time to catch a bus that is heading to Macedonia (or FYROM former Yugoslavian republic of macedonia) the bus ride was enjoyable, for 4 hours I slept on the bus and did other useless things.

Then came the second Bulgarian border of the day. Once again was quite uneventful. Then came the FYROM border. The man came and collected the passports of all 50 or so people on the bus and when he got to me he said "visa" and I gave him the blank look which has come in handy so many times on this trip. And then he left. I was a little confused that he had only asked me for a visa.

About 15 long and agonizing minutes later...just kidding. He came back in and he said Canada and Korea off the bus. So I walked off the bus with Stacey my fellow canadian and Jong Kyu the karazy korean. Turns out we needed a visa and they weren't going to let us to Macedonia. So I go back on the bus and collect my stuff and say goodbye to the other 6 members of our team.

Here is where the fun times began. So this man escorts us thru this gate and we are all thinking that he is going to help us get things sorted out, but all he says to us is that we need to go to Sofia to get a visa. And then slams and locks a gate in our faces. A flippin gate that I could have jumped over if I had want to. So here we were, the 3 of us standing in unfamilar territory. And I started laughing. Its all I could do. We were thrown off the bus with like basically no money.

So I suggested that we save money *save the non existant money and hitch back. Well we got picked up by a strange man, and he took us through the Bulgarian border for the 3rd time that day, and we were marked as unaccepted...I have an unaccepted stamp in my passport. I think that thats quite funny.

Anyways so this man drives us to Sofia and drops us off and we wander around for a while trying to find the FYROM embassy, and then I go and ask at a hostel if they will give us a super good deal. And I told the story to this one man, the whole sad story and he had pity and lead me to another way cheaper hostel. Which brings us to where we are now. I was noticing that we were the only non asian ones here...me and stace. Well turns out that its a Japanese guest house. HAHAHA. so ya i though thtat was funny.

So tomorrow we will be going and trying to get our visas....the funny never stops :)
angee